Our original plans for Disney included leaving on Friday
night, stopping around Valdosta, GA, and then arrive mid-day Saturday with a
possible afternoon visit to Epcot. Once
we realized Dakota would be out of school on Friday, we decided to book an
extra day and arrive on Friday. That
eventually led us to leave at midnight.
You can see the path we’re taking here.
Needless to say, Day 1 actually began about 10pm Thursday night.
Knowing we’d plan to leave around midnight, Jon had decided
to stay up all night on Wednesday night and sleep all day Thursday. We left home around 10pm with everything
packed – almost. We got about a mile up the
road and realized we’d left Sarah’s sippy cup in the fridge at home. Knowing she tends to want her sippy a lot
during the night, we turned around to go home and get it. Thank goodness we weren’t any further down
the road or we may have been making a stop at Walmart on the way.
Around 10:15pm, we finally left home the last time with
blankets, pillows, and that ever important sippy in tow. We drove straight through only stopping for
gas and bathroom breaks. Just past
Chattanooga, we encountered a small traffic slowdown due to construction. Atlanta is always our main concern since
traffic can be so bad down I75. I’m
usually the navigator through Atlanta.
Jon pays attention to the traffic and I watch the GPS and signs to make
sure he’s in the right lane so we don’t venture off I75. It’s what works for us. He woke me up before Atlanta and we proceeded
through the entire city with extremely low to no traffic. It was amazing! We decided 2am during the
week is the perfect time to drive through Atlanta.
Just past Atlanta, we were needing gas and a bathroom
break. We stopped in Jonesboro and
quickly saw this was not the place to be at 2:30am. After getting gas, we realized there was a
sign on the door that they didn’t have restrooms anyway and seeing people
hanging around outside at that time of morning made us uncomfortable so we
quickly got out of there. We traveled
south a little further and stopped in Perry, GA for the necessary bathroom
break. As soon as we pulled into the gas
station and saw a cop car sitting near the front, we felt safer. The people in the store were SUPER nice and
told us their town had been rated as one of the 5 safest places in
Georgia. They said at night a
cop was never far from there store.
After a bathroom break and some snacks, we headed back on
the road. We all went back to sleep,
except Jon of course. He trudged along
down I75 until we reached Florida. By
that time, it was daylight and we could enjoy the sights a little more. We continued until we reached our destination
at around 9:30am: All Star Movies.
We were very early for check-in but we were able to spend
some time “playing.” We went to the
playground for a little bit and let the kids have some fun. I finally convinced Jon to go back to the car
by himself and take a nap. He slept for
about an hour and woke up feeling refreshed.
By the time he woke up, it was almost time for lunch so we headed to the
food court and enjoyed a pizza lunch from one of the counters there. Once finished with lunch, the kids had a
blast playing in the arcade for a while. Once their cards were almost empty, we
decided to let them play at the kiddie pool for a while. We’d just sat down at the kiddie pool when we
received a text saying our room was ready.
We spent some time napping in the room after unpacking. We then decided to take the bus to Magic
Kingdom and hop the monorail to tour some resorts. We decided not to stop at the Contemporary,
thinking we wouldn’t have much to see or do there. We did stop at the Polynesian, which is a
beautiful resort. We took a moment while
there to enjoy Dole Whips. We then
headed back to the monorail and proceeded to the Grand Floridian. The Grand Floridian is a nice hotel, but a
little too fancy for my liking. It was still neat to see the details. After dinner at the resort, we decided to
head in for the night since we were going to attempt rope drop at Epcot on
Saturday morning.
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